Entries tagged with “Brendan Van Winkle”
Policy Issues
Intellectual Disability
,United States Supreme Court
,Oct 07, 2022
Atkins at 20: Assessing the Purported Ban on Executing Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities
In its landmark decision in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the use of the death penalty against individuals with intellectual disability constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Twenty years later, however, “there is not just the risk, but the certainty” that states continue to sentence intellectually disabled defendants to death, three legal scholars argue, and the federal courts are letting…